Things Lost

GeekDad had a fun (re)post recently that talked about the things kids born recently or in the future will never have any experience with. Throughout time, this has always been true, but it seems to be more prevalent in the last few hundred years. Things are changing at an accelerated pace, for better or for worse. One of these I experienced first hand:

Playing music on an audio tape using a personal stereo. See what happens when you give a Walkman to today’s teenager.

Back when I was working in schools, a test prep question came up where it mentioned a Walkman. The kids had no idea what it was. I felt old then. I remember making mixed tapes by recording songs off the radio. Timing it just right and being lucky enough to catch the song you wanted took some effort.

Here’s a select few I will either lament losing or think will be something kids miss out on, even if it’s not bad that they are gone.

Audio-Visual Entertainment

1. The number of TV channels being a single digit. I remember it being a massive event when Britain got its fourth channel.
2. Watching TV when the networks say you should. Tivo and Sky+ are slowing killing this one.
3. That there was a time before ‘reality TV.’

Computers and Videogaming

1. The scream of a modem connecting.
2. Counting in kilobytes.
3. Blowing the dust out of a NES cartridge in the hopes that it’ll load this time.
4. Having to delete something to make room on your hard drive.

The Internet

1. Using a road atlas to get from A to B.
2. Carrying on a correspondence with real letters, especially the handwritten kind.
3. Waiting several minutes (or even hours!) to download something.

Gadgets

1. Sending that film away to be processed.
2. Rotary-dial telephones.

Everything Else

1. Remembering someone’s phone number.
2. Not knowing who was calling you on the phone.
3. Actually going down to a Blockbuster store to rent a movie.
4. Waiting for the television-network premiere to watch a movie after its run at the theater.
5. Han shoots first.
6. “Obi-Wan never told you what happened to your father.” But they’ve already seen episode III, so it’s no big surprise.
7. Having to manually unlock a car door.
8. When a ‘geek’ and a ‘nerd’ were one and the same.